Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (2 page)

“All right,” I said.

“Do you feel fit?”

“No, I walked here.”

Grinning evilly, he wrote Grade 1 (One) in blood red ink on my card. “No black cap?” I said. “It’s at the laundry,” he replied.

The die was cast. It was a proud day for the Milligan family as I was taken from the house. “I’m too young to go,” I screamed as Military Policemen dragged me from my pram, clutching dummy. At Victoria Station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked ‘This is your enemy’. I searched every compartment, but he wasn’t on the train. At 4.30, June 2
nd
, 1940, on a summer’s day all mare’s tails and blue sky we arrived at Bexhill-on-Sea, where I got off. It wasn’t easy. The train didn’t stop there.

The air-raid shelter my mother built for the family The face is my father’s

Giant troop-carrying submarines

Giant troop-carrying airships

266-ton land cruiser (upper and lower decks
)

Schoolboy’s impression of how Britain should meet the invader: tanks meeting high tension wires (looking like barbed wire) and exploding on contact

My father, Leo Milligan

Grandfather, William Milligan

Great-grandfather, Michael Milligan

My mother's side. Trumpet Sergeant A.H. Kettleband, Indian Armay, about 1899

Tommy Brettell’s Ritz Revels. Yours truly
, extreme
right, front row

Part II

I JOIN THE REGIMENT

L
ugging a suitcase tied with traditional knotted string, I made my way to Headquarters 56
th
Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery. Using sign language they re-directed me to D Battery. They were stationed in a building called ‘Worthingholm’, an evacuated girls’ school in Hastings Road. As I entered the drive, a thing of singular military ugliness took my eye. It was Battery Sergeant-Major ‘Jumbo’ Day. His hair was so shorn his neck seemed to go straight up the back of his hat, and his face was suffused red by years of drinking his way to promotion. “Oi! Where yew goin’? It ain’t a girls’ school no more.”

“Isn’t it? Never mind I’ll join the Regiment instead,” I said.

He screwed up his eyes. “You’re not
Milligan
, are yew’”

“Actually I am.”

A beam of sadistic pleasure spread over his face.

“We’ve been waiting for yew!” he said, pushing me ahead of him with his stick. He drove me into what was D Battery Office. The walls once white were now thrice grey. From a peeling ceiling hung a forty watt bulb that when lit made the room darker. A Danker Wallah was giving the bare floor a stew-coloured hue by slopping a mop around, re-arranging the dirt. On the wall was a calendar with a naked tart advertising cigarettes. Below it was a newspaper cut-out of Neville Chamberlain grinning upwards. Fronting the fireplace was a trestle table covered with a merry grey blanket. A pile of O.H.M.S. letters, all addressed to me, were tucked in the corner of the blotter. In the lid of a cardboard shoe-box was a collection of rubber bands, paperclips, sealing-wax, string and a lead weight. My pulses raced! Here was the heart of a great fighting machine. Seated behind this mighty war organ was a middle-aged, pink, puffy-faced man in his early fifties wearing a uniform in its late seventies. Parts that had frayed had been trimmed with leather; these included cuffs, elbows, pockets, gaiters and all trailing edges; for this reason he was known as ‘Leather Suitcase’. His maiden name was Major Startling Grope. “This is Gunner Milligan sin,” said the B.S.M. When they’d both finished laughing, the Major spoke.